I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
The new artist is meeting the general public before they meet the record company. They're able to put the material on YouTube and have a million views before they even meet an executive at a record company, and get the deal based on that.
I haven't been walking around for years with some burning desire to do a solo record. If I had, maybe I'd have made a record that was experimental. Usually, the idea of a solo record is to get some weird stuff out of your system, but I don't think like that. I wasn't interested in making something that was a hard listen - maybe I'll get around to that some other time. I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel.
One of the main reasons why it didn't work out for me and Aftermath is because I felt my music should sound one way, and they felt it should sound another. But, I learned a lot from watching Dre, and when I left California, I knew it was time for me to get my own label.
What this bill says is it reiterates again the deadline, and that the Senate should act before the deadline, and that's what the American people are expecting.
Any time you find yourself doing something out of obligation, that's a time you should start questioning whether you're spending your time wisely.
I say have the night and give people the awards, but why do people want to watch people win awards? What are they getting out of it? I don't quite get it. Because they have awards all the time; there's awards for butchers, the best meat served, but they don't televise it. I don't know why they do it for films or TV programs.
It's nice to have awards from time to time. There was a time when I had to make a living from my writing, and it wasn't always easy. I value awards a lot - and more so if there is a little cash with them!
If you send out one coupon with a deadline of a week and another that must be used within the next month, you end up having more redemptions with the one week deadline. It's really amazing. With the month deadline you have four times as much time, but people tend to say they'll use it in a few weeks' time and then they don't do it.
I just felt something was missing from my vision of what Tycho should eventually be. It took several years of learning new recording and production techniques to get to a point where I felt I could make a record like 'Awake.'
I don't think any of us felt like, "Oh, we need to put joke songs on the record." If we found something funny, we would record it, and if we wanted to, we'd put it on the record. It's not really something we spent too much time agonizing over.
If I was to spend time working out what the record company got - and those in that team of people around us - I would lose my mind.
I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'
For a long time, I felt like I failed myself, my career, and my record company.
That's my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don't have to sell out to the record company. You don't have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.
You wonder why your government's completely broken? We lurch from deadline to deadline, and it's on purpose really. We do deadline to deadline because ... 'we've got to go. It's spring break, we're going to be late for spring break, and we've got to go, so we've got to finish this up before we go.'